Have the First Shots Already Been Fired in This Culture War?

I recently wrote about how amid the continued metastasizing of America's culture wars we have seen much that recalled the rancor of Japan years or decades earlier--in particular that over young people and young men in particular "dropping out of life," and what it means for the economic and demographic base. So it seemed to me again as the matter of "virtual girlfriends" has become more topical amid advances in artificial intelligence, the first outbursts of moral panic over the matter already behind us--certainly as of Liberty Vittert's piece about the matter in The Hill last year in which she claimed that "AI Girlfriends Are Ruining an Entire Generation of Men" (this actually the title of the item). The "data scientist" backed up this claim with no evidence whatsoever apart from a few unsourced figures indicative of social disengagement among males 18-30 that include their greater singleness (without explaining how it is that 60 percent of women that age are in a relationship while only 30 percent of men that age are), and reference to the existence of some users for an AI bot by an "influencer" named Caryn. Far from establishing causation, she did not even do much to evidentiate correlation--but it was quite enough for her to plug it into the familiar moral panic-over-cyber-stuff narrative (cross out "video games," write in "AI girlfriends"), as she rushed to connect this with what some regard as a crisis in natality, and that in turn with the collapsing support ratios calling into question the viability of Social Security and Medicare (in a spirit of "just saying," I guess).

Of course, in a reminder (as if any were needed!) that technocrat credentials, personal platform and a willingness to say the "right" things count for infinitely more than saying anything actually worth hearing, here was her piece in this publication, and its receipt of respectful mention in publications running the gamut from CNN to Business Insider to the Guardian.

So far as I know it was only in TechDirt that we got a more critical stance toward Ms. Vittert's argument, Mike Masnick pretty much tearing it apart in every way that it could be, from showing up her questionable use of the data, to her use of familiar narratives bankrupt in the eyes of many, while even throwing in the obvious Futurama reference for good measure.

That was a reminder of how far off the beaten path one has to go to get some real perspective on such matters--with this unlikely to be the last time we need it on a subject about which we seem likely to hear a lot more in the years ahead.